In footage posted to YouTube, Cody Kunau says he and a friend were headed to dinner when a brown bear ran across the road in front of them. Kunau is a fishing guide in Yakutat, Alaska. There’s no shortage of bears up there so bear encounters are a normal occurrence.
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An Alaskan Grizzly Bear Charges Car
They slowed to catch a close up glimpse of the bear and see where it went — which is when this almost turned into a much more graphic video.
The bear, watching the vehicle slow to a stop, erupts from the trees at them. Depending on species, brown bears can run as fast as 40 mph. They can (and have) torn bumpers off cars.
“We could see no cubs, no kill, or anything that would make this bear behave the way it did,” an attached statement from Kunau reads.
He says the same bear attacked another car following him, and the brown bear attack was one of “the scariest moments of my life.”
Don’t Stop and Watch Wild Bears
As this video proves, whether it’s a brown bear, grizzly bear, or black bear, maybe don’t stop and point at the uncaged wild predator standing twenty feet away from you.
Why? Let’s ask a rhetorical question to illustrate why, shall we? Do you, average human being reading this article, believe that you could, at a moment’s notice, successfully run away from or beat up a comic book superhero (or supervillain, we should say) that eats people? In other words, a being with super strength and super speed… that eats people. Do you think you could run away from or fight that off? The answer, no matter what you actually answer, is no. Not with your bare hands anyway.
This article was originally published July 9, 2017.